Background: The use of computers and computing devices is constantly increasing within our society. Personal computer use, as well as business computing use, is on the rise. Furthermore, many smaller devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants, and pagers, are being developed to display additional information to a user. As advances in computing devices occur, advances in display devices for displaying information on the computing devices are also occurring.
Advances in display technology for graphics and object images are also occurring. Robust display systems and programs for displaying pixel-based images are replacing simple text and character based graphical imaging systems. Many of the display systems and programs allow for the display of higher definition images and incorporate functions for manipulating such displays. The use of objects and displayed images to display information is becoming more popular in the marketplace. Advancements in imaging and object displays are very apparent on the Internet. As the Internet has evolved, graphical displays and graphical interaction over the Internet has become more popular. Many web pages contain multiple images and/or pictures for display on a display screen of a computing device.
As more pictures and/or three-dimensional objects are incorporated with Internet pages, more time and energy is required to create these complex resources and more memory and computer CPU power is required to load them. Furthermore, the amount of bandwidth required to transmit such object representation data between computing devices is also increased, thereby making transmission of and interaction with rich multimedia and object representation data practical. Most existing methods and technologies display three-dimensional objects using interactive three-dimensional display programs called geometry rendering engines which transform three-dimensional data and detail imagery into pixels in a process called rendering. Each polygon or piece of the geometry may have many detail images. These methods don't require large bandwidth, but are very computationally intensive requiring fast CPU's, extra memory and a period of time between each interaction to transform the geometry and its images to render and display it. In addition, the meshwork of geometry required by geometry rendering engines requires significant work to capture, optimize and combined with detail images to represent a three-dimensional object. This is especially true of complex shapes which are cost-prohibitive to create. A vehicle would be a good example of an intricate and complex three-dimensional shape.
Another type of interactive three-dimensional display program uses a matrix of captured images to simulate the object by displaying pictures of it at different angles as the user interacts with it using an input device. This technology is very cost effective for production but requires more bandwidth and a fraction of the computation to display. There aren't any products on the market that have utilized this methodology to configure an object or provide auxiliary information about individual views of the object.
Object representation data sets require specific interactive three-dimensional display programs specific to the format of their data for interpretation, manipulation and display. These programs must typically be stored on the computing device and linked to the type of object representation data they can interpret. For instance, a web-browser surfing the Internet may attempt to display object representation data loaded from a web page. If the interactive display program that can interpret, display and interact with the object representation data hasn't been installed and associated with the web-browser or is not recognized by the web-browser, the web-browser may not be able to interpret, display or interact with it. In many cases, the web-browser may be altered to represent the object data by loading the interactive display program as a web-browser plug-in, or supplemental program, specifically designed to represent it in the web-browser. The use of plug-ins with web-browsers is well known.
Although plug-ins are typically available for displaying images, their use can be complicated and frustrating. Typically, a user first finds out that they are unable to view an object or animation at the time they try to download it. If it does not load and display, a user may or may not be provided with a link for obtaining a plug-in for viewing the desired object representation data, as seen with certain popular operating systems and media types, such as QuickTime VR™, which is installed with the incorrect display type by default in Microsoft Windows™. If a plug-in exists, a user is typically required to download the plug-in, install the plug-in, reboot their computing device, and reload the object representation data needing the plug-in. These steps take time and may be frustrating to the average computer user. Thus, many users just ignore the plug-ins and avoid viewing objects that their web-browser does not display by default.
Furthermore, current client applications operating on electronic devices such as personal digital assistants or cell phones are limited by the amount of available memory and computing power required by the interactive display programs and the object representation data they interpret and display.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a system and methods for capturing, interpreting, displaying and interacting with objects, animations, and where applicable, information about the object, without the requirement of a plug-in to view the images. Furthermore, it is desirable to provide a system and method that easily and cost-effectively creates object representation data for a wide array of display devices that differ in computational power, memory and input methods.